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a new musical by Dana Boll and Ben Goldberg

Synopsis

A Rime of the Ancient Mariner for our time, told through the eyes of Towson, a young corporate executive in New York City, who is haunted by an encounter with a stranger on a transatlantic flight and the realization that his long-discarded plastic toothbrush killed a magnificent sea bird.

When Towson quits his job suddenly because “his toothbrush killed an albatross?!” his colleagues and high-powered Devil-Wears-Prada-esque boss are stunned. He has no plan and walks out. Beth, a street canvasser for Save the Children, befriends the downtrodden executive and offers him new perspective. His colleagues make overtures to try to bring him back to his senses and into the office.

An epic meditation on our addiction to plastics, the fallout of corporate greed, and the limits of male privilege, we see a familiar cartoonish workaday world splintered by a deeper yearning for redemption, transcendence, and connection, as the albatross and a mysterious Mariner provoke questions. What do we hold on to? How do we transcend our daily struggles? What do we do about single-use plastics? How do we go on with all the problems around us?